1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus having a detachably mountable cassette of recording material mounted thereon to record on a recording material by use of recording means in accordance with recording information.
2. Related Background Art
As a recording apparatus, there has been known the thermal transfer recording apparatus of line recording type (printing apparatus of thermal transfer type) that uses a thermosensitive sheet as a recording material (recording medium), such as recording paper sheet, and records images on the recording material one after another per dot line by driving selectively a plurality of heat generating elements arranged for the apparatus in the widthwise direction of the recording material to be carried, and by carrying the recording material at the same time. In recent years, along with the advancement of input device, such as a digital camera, a digital video camera, or a scanner, that serves as equipment dealing with images on the input side, the aforesaid thermal transfer type recording apparatus has again attracted attention.
This is because the thermal transfer type recording head can easily change the quantities of heat which is made controllable per pixel, and provide various gradations per pixel, as well as a printed image finished in as good quality as a silver salt photograph, together with the enhanced performance of thermal head and the improvement of sheet material to be used. Under the circumstances, there have been filed many patent applications for recording apparatuses for use of natural image representation, in particular, so as to keep abreast with the technical advancement of digital cameras in recent years.
For example, an art is disclosed in the specification of Japanese Patent Application No. 11-123838, which relates to cooling the heating head of a sublimation type printing apparatus (sublimation type recording apparatus). With this art, a cooling fan is installed for a carriage member that includes a thermal head. This is effective as a heat control measure needed for a thermal head.
Also, in the specification of Japanese Patent Publication No. 2824498, there is disclosed an art which relates to the carrying passage of a recording apparatus. In accordance with this art, recording sheets (printing sheets) are kept in stack inside the inner housing supported to be made inclinable in the outer housing, and a recording sheet (printing sheet) on the lowest layer is pressed to a sheet feeding roller by biasing both the inner housing and the upper portion of recording sheet downward by use of each biasing means, and then, the recording sheet is fed out from the sheet feeding port arranged for the bottom of the outer housing by the rotation of the sheet feeding roller effectuated in such condition described above, hence feeding sheet more reliably. In this way, the carrying passage of a recording sheet is made shorter between the sheet feeding unit and the recording unit (printing unit).
Also, in accordance with an image recording apparatus described in the specification of Japanese Patent Application No. 11-138875, an art is disclosed to make it possible for the recording apparatus to record (print) on the surface side and backside of a recording sheet. The image recording apparatus thus disclosed provides a structure capable of implementing the sublimation recording that records high quality full color images on the surface side of a recording sheet prepared for sublimation use, and also, implementing thermofusion image recording on the back side thereof in an optimal heating condition suitable for such recording by use of only one recording apparatus. This structure is extremely effective when recording is made on both sides of a recording sheet.
However, these prior examples haven not been good enough as yet to solve problems related to making a recording apparatus smaller and performable at higher speed. For example, the recording apparatus disclosed in the specification of Japanese Patent Application No. 11-123838 adopts the structure where a cooling fan is provided for the carriage member that includes a thermal head. As a result, the size of the recording apparatus is made larger (dimension increases) in the height direction inevitably. There is of course a case where the larger size of a recording apparatus does not present any problem should no restriction be imposed upon the installation site such as in an office arranged for business activities. However, for family use in general, the smaller the better. In other words, one of the reasons that the family use thereof has not been promoted as anticipated despite the good quality obtainable by the recording apparatus of the kind is that the apparatus is not small enough. It is prerequisite that the recording apparatus of the kind is made smaller in order to promote its family use in general.
Also, for the recording apparatus disclosed in the specification of Japanese Patent Publication No. 2898178, the structure is arranged to make it possible to shorten the carrying passage according to the description thereof. This apparatus is effective to make the carrying passage shorter. On the other hand, however, the inner structure is liable to become more complicated if it is intended to miniaturize the apparatus main body, and also, the structure, in which the inner housing is supported to be made inclinable in the outer housing, is not necessarily considered effective in making the apparatus main body smaller. The disclosed apparatus is still insufficient after all even only from the viewpoint of making the apparatus main body smaller. Also, for the conventional recording apparatuses, most of them are structured to allow the sheet cassette (recording material cassette) that contains recording sheets (recording material) to be protruded largely from the front side of the apparatus main body when installed at the time of recording (printing).
In this case, it is necessary to execute recording (printing) by the recording apparatus which should be brought out to be set each time from the place where it is usually kept or by securing a sufficiently large space on the location where the sheet cassette is handled for installation in the recording apparatus so that the sheet cassette can be inserted without any obstacle for recording each time it is used. In the latter case, the sheet cassette is removed from the apparatus main body and stored in some other place or the like. An operation of the kind is extremely nuisance. These unfavorable handling requirements should be another reason to impede the promotion of family use of the recording apparatus of the kind in general.
With a view to solving such technical problems as described above, there have been proposed in recent years recording apparatuses which are structured to contain the sheet cassette in the interior of the apparatus main body. The operativity of a recording apparatus of the kind that has a sheet cassette incorporated in it is excellent, and expected to become one of the leading devices in the future. At the present, however, the structure of the apparatus main body still remains unchanged, hence making the recording apparatus extremely long eventually in the directions forward and backward. Here, therefore, such a recording apparatus has been proposed as to adopt a structure in which the print engine mechanism (recording operation mechanism) that has been arranged in the recording apparatus in the directions forward and backward thereof conventionally is rotated 90 degrees to be arranged in the horizontal direction so that the sheet cassette is drawn out in the direction at 90 degrees to the recording direction. However, the recording apparatus thus structured becomes extremely large in the horizontal direction, and does not contribute to embodying a smaller apparatus as desired. The status quo is still the same.
Also, the recording apparatus having the recording engine (print engine) arranged in the horizontal direction is such as to automatically limit the size of a recording sheet that can be contained in the sheet cassette. In other words, if, for example, recording should be made on a recording sheet of panoramic size (a panorama sheet), which has a horizontal length approximately twice the size of standard size recording sheet (an ordinary post-card size sheet, for instance), it is impossible to record (print) on such a long recording sheet in case where the size of the sheet cassette is determined by the size of the apparatus main body, hence inevitably restricting the usage of a recording apparatus of the kind.
As described above, there has been conventionally technical difficulties in providing a recording apparatus capable of complying with the user""s request that each of the various kinds of recording is possible (particularly, recording is possible on each of the various kinds of recording sheets having different sizes), while coping with both the provision of a smaller main body of the apparatus, and the maintenance of desirable container functions of sheet cassette at the same time. It is apparently conceivable that the various kinds of recording thus required here should include the function to perform the double side recording where recording is made on both the surface side and backside of a recording sheet. For a double side recording of the kind, a recording apparatus is disclosed in the specification of Japanese Patent Application No. 11-138875, but it requires the user to input a recording sheet prepared for sublimation use into the apparatus reversely, and change the operational mode of mode setting means to enable the reverse recording mode to be executable. The user tends to find these operations extremely nuisance. There is a drawback that handling is not easy, either.
Here, this technical problem that various kinds of recording should be made possible while coping with both the provision of smaller main body of an apparatus and the maintenance of the desirable container function of sheet cassette is also concurrently encountered when designing the recording apparatus of ink jet type that uses an ink jet recording head as recording engine (print engine).
The present invention is designed in consideration of the technical problems discussed above. It is an object of the invention to provide a recording apparatus capable of easily and reliably recording on each of various recording materials which are different in sizes even with the apparatus main body minimized in size just by replacing the recording material cassettes, and also, capable of easily and reliably executing on each of various recording materials which are different in sizes the color recording that requires the repetition of reciprocating conveyance of the recording material through the recording unit.
It is another object of the invention to provide a recording apparatus which is made still smaller but capable of automatically performing double side recording just by replacing recording material cassettes in addition to the object described above.
It is still another object of the invention to provide a recording apparatus, which is provided with a detachably mountable recording material cassette for supplying recording material for recording on recording material by means of a recording head in accordance with recording information, comprising a carrying passage for recording material formed on a part of recording material cassette, and a carrying passage for the recording material formed in the interior of apparatus main body, and then, a carrying passage formed by the carrying passage formed on the recording material cassette and the carrying passage formed in the apparatus main body, which is provided with a curved carrying path to be curved on the front and backsides of recording apparatus, and a recording unite arranged between the curved carrying passages to perform recording on the way of the carrying passage formed for the apparatus main body.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a recording apparatus, which is provided with a detachably mountable recording material cassette for supplying recording material for recording on recording material by means of a recording head in accordance with recording information, comprising a first carrying passage for recording material formed on a part of recording material cassette, a second carrying passage for the recording material formed in the interior of apparatus main body, a third carrying passage formed by connecting the first carrying passage and the second carrying passage, which is provided with a curved carrying path to be curved on the front and back sides of recording apparatus, and a recording unite arranged on a location along the second carrying passage positioned to face the first carrying passage for holding the recording head.
It is still a further object of the invention to provide a recording apparatus for recording on recording material by means of a recording head held in a recording unit, which comprises a recording material cassette for containing recording material, which is installed on the upper side of the recording unit inside apparatus main body, and detachably mountable in the same direction as the direction of carrying recording material during recording, and carrying means for expelling recording material from apparatus main body after guiding the recording material from the recording material cassette to the recording unit, which is arranged to carry recording material from the backside of apparatus main body into the interior of apparatus main body, at the same time, reversing recording material during recording from the front side in the interior of apparatus main body for guiding the recording material to the recording unit, and expelling the recording material after completion of recording from the rear side of upper face of apparatus main body toward the front side thereof.